At the Café Huracán across from Salomėja Neris (“The Traitor”) High School
Benjamin Niespodziany
Joshua Anthony
Abbie Doll
Norman Minnick
Alex Niemi
Emiliana Renuart
Mathieu Cailler
John Blair
Celeste Funari
Muse
Celeste Funari
Muse
Danae Sioziou translated from the Greek by Panagiota Stoltidou
Danae Sioziou translated from the Greek by Panagiota Stoltidou
Alejandro Borge Osorio
Ben Miller
Gerardo Sámano Córdova
Imani Nikelle
Rimas Uzgiris
LOST
Benjamin Niespodziany
I needed to make it to a lake. My friends were waiting. I knocked on a door. An old woman answered. “Yes?” she said. She sounded like my dead grandmother. She looked like my dead grandmother. She was not my dead grandmother. “I’m trying to find a lake,” I said. “Which lake?” she asked. “I don’t know which lake,” I said. “Lots of lakes around here,” the woman like my dead grandmother said. My phone rang and I couldn’t read the screen. Couldn’t see the number. I apologized to the woman like my dead grandmother and answered the call. It was my dead grandmother. “I’m trying to find a lake,” she said. “Which lake?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “Lots of lakes around here,” I said. “Who is it?” asked the woman like my dead grandmother but who was defnitely not my dead grandmother. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know either,” the woman said. “And neither do I,” my dead grandmother replied.
WINTER RENEWED
Joshua Anthony
no birds but smoke from a fire. the air is cold sun melting snow on asphalt. shopping carts spun out in the slush and exhaustion. this is the anticipation of spit. this day is a lost city. this was always midnight solstice. fire engines so tired they slip by without lights without sirens only the tambourines louder now over every pothole.
SHELLS AND SHIELDS
Abbie Doll
sippin’ mint tea from a tmnt || soup mug pickin’ || popcorn kernels flickin’ || slobbery debris flyin’ || from gummy molar graves || amidst this || stupid || barbed || wire || infra-struct-ure || that poker holds and folds || these stubborn chompers || like the stiff deck o’ cards they are || gotta keep ‘em (in) l i n e || ‘cause even a mouth full of teeth || needs a leo to lead || but that last buttery scrap || is one tedious son of a gun || —a foreign fragment filament— || which i lollipop lick and lick || and flick some more || tonguing it with the same insistence in which || i pinball-flipper toggle light switches || when the power goes out || busying myself with || calling electricity’s bluff
and in the flickering candlelight || we start a war || of obstinance || with these funky foot clan foreigners || who threaten the security of my sewer lair || to such an extent that we || must enlist every last || appendage to help || excavate, to help || pluck ‘em out with surgical precision || until the wet caved worm grows sore || (at me) || all irritated and agitated || (at me, brother) || because as much as i’d like it to be || a grooved pickaxe || it’s not. || but despite the whole || wrong-toolfor-the-job thing || we’ve gone and weaponized it anyway || ‘cause if there’s one thing || we can’t stand || it’s a god-damn alien
occupying our homeland— || this mere microscopic invader || who’s got no business here || in the sloppy terrain of my mouth || so step back || strap your safety goggles on || and watch || me take this thing || this innocent bystander || who’s relatively harmless || and blow this hardly-a-crime scene || w i d e o p e n || we’re talkin’ FBI-file wide || a senseless investigation led by || none other than || mister the truth is out there || mister(y) fox mulder || whom i’ll take and easy-bake || into a full-fledged self-harm obsession || here, lemme jus’ form the coven of duchovny || right quick
and yes, yes, yes, i know || like my fifth meeting today without meaning || this, too, has gotten offtrack || and you never asked, but hey || that’s alright, i’ll forgive your lack of consideration || (this time) || —the turtle on the mug in question || is raph || (of course) || good ol’ riff raph, rough raph, tough raph, never-thought-he-was-enough raph || that bodacious dude with a mindset hellbent || on tough exterior maintenance || (with tenacity tougher than that damn shell of a back) || armed with that militarized show-no-weakness men-tal || -ity, that do-or-die to-tal-ity || that quick fuse, that || gotta-sequester-myself-before-any-tears-leak-out act || ‘cause new yorkers? never cry.
and okay, yeah we know (now) || just how problematic || that cramped headspace can be || …but… || raphael’s still my go-to pal || still a lovable goofball gumball || despite that brick-thick shell || ain’t nunna that gunna change now || the red in him || clued me in || on the broken || and that whole pain-equals-depth thing || (the tortured’s favorite pocketed delusion) || and yeah, there was an attraction || not to his turtleness || don’t be weird ya perve || not to his ninjaness either || just his essential raphness
because let’s face it: || part of crawling out || of a broken home is || being lured in || by those with || crowded hearts || because you’ve got a shell-shocked history, too || where love was a rarity || and so || you continue || to seek affection from those || who can’t || deliver || —until your version of priceless nineties collectibles || mutates into this wild ebay assortment of damaged goods || where you specialize in || relations with || the clinically detached || and you do it for no other reason than || the familiarity of it all || and yah, that too || is tricky-sticky territory || slippery slope, ya dope! || but you try tellin’ the attraction that || see if it responds || or goes and plows right on through || in its own stubborn ways || in its own twisted gps-routed path
so anyway || back to the wrath of raph— || he is me || and we are he || and we are here || with our pained grimace grins || sip sip sippin’ our tea || in this never-ending endeavor || to soothe || our inconsolable angst || and sure, it scorches our tongues || we, the self-shredded || are, after all || byproducts of || our own impatience || and we the turtly people of united rage || sheathe our sensitivity || with these cloth masks sewn || from years and years of tears withheld || we, this nation of modern indignation!
but the truth of the matter here is || we’ve been stuck in these sewers || long enough to know || that the enemy we face || time and time again || isn’t shredder. || shredder’s nothing || nothing but another opponent to tackle || this totally beatable—external—entity || but that thing? || in the mirror? || that reflection? || in the glass? || that’s our top villainous threat.
and it’s a hell of a lot tougher || than that damn kernel || that’ll dislodge itself—eventually || (in its own time) || but creatures like us we || just can’t let things be we || toil and disrupt the flow ‘cause || fuck you and fuck patience || we didn’t suffer that puddle of ooze || just to sit back and watch || as our backs bend || and break || beneath the toxic weight || of socie-tea || —especiall-ea when it’s all ass-backwards || and painfull-ea arbitrar-ea
AFTER FRANK O’HARA
Norman Minnick
an invitation to lunch
HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? when I have no cash and some leftover fish there’s a lesson in that, isn’t there a Chinese poet stands alone in a field in the Tang dynasty torn between heaven and earth (mainly because some errant translator kept him there) and I’ve got two-day-old fish that must be eaten before it begins to rot
I HAVE NO CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT
Alex Niemi
after Kim Hyesoon
once more, he repeated that delimiting the now of contemporaneity was of the utmost— wriggling concept clusters, that’s the spirit, tingling loins of liminality, how else could we possibly sex this life? what is the air when you could have a think dank? he orates and I boing boing boing cutting my cuticles out of my square thumb I have a theory I say, a crusty-video-mall theory, a bloody-nose-party theory a gawking-teen-maximal-angst theory, a tarmac-sun-squish theory have you heard of my theory? I ask swivel-chair-mammoth theory, duh, the catastrophic-lollipop theory I pull out the last lisa frank notebook in the world from my backpack covered in pencil shavings and eraser dust and sour patch birth control sugar
he has equated the transnational with the asymmetrical the subjectivity with the rejection of historicity he repeats the axioms of the past and future theories— I belch into the videogame void the toggle is mine to generate over this licorice vice press A, sequence engaged heroine theory which heroine? which one is it? he rips the controller from my hands are you triumph or intravenous-death theory? rotting-plotless theory, I wolf out into the night.
LEVEE IN YELLOW
Emiliana Renuart
I know I’ve got it all wrong. Hello, wildness. Nature does not stop. Even the toes insistent on defying the flight of life. Head broken off at the neck. Trumpet pitched over. The stage is just one room. Behind the door is a wall. In the shoe is a foot. I hear horns, though they only became distinct to me just now, just right now, rounding the bend.
THE POLAR BEAR ESCAPED FROM THE
Cailler SAN DIEGO ZOO
Mathieu
and trudged north for hours alongside a desolate highway. The polar bear hitchhiked and thought it strange that the signal for such a miserable activity was the thumbs-up. Hours later, a rumbling eighteen-wheeler pulled over and sounded its air brake. The polar bear climbed aboard and savored the swirling A/C inside the truck’s cabin. “Marty,” the driver said, extending his hand. “Where you headed?” he asked. “Alaksa,” the polar bear said. “Want to see my birthland.” Marty said he could take him as far as Fresno, but that he wasn’t headed to Alaska. The polar bear nodded. “You never been?” Marty said. “Born and raised at the zoo,” the polar bear answered. Marty pulled out his cell phone and showed the polar bear some videos of Alaska on YouTube. Marty pointed to a Wendy’s chocolate Frosty in the cupholder and told the polar bear it was all his if he wanted it. Marty then put the truck in gear and rumbled away. The polar bear stared through the windshield at the dashed yellow lines on the highway. To the polar bear—they were all pawprints, leading the way home.
NOLI ME TANGERE
John Blair
. . .when we touch/ we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone. Anne Sexton, “The Truth the Dead Know”
The crack at the edge of the entrance stone is like a filament of awareness, right at the cusp where it burns itself out. Day, night, day again. Night.
You wait. You do not pray because you cannot pray. You can as a thing only lay where you’ve been laid, a slick of oil daubed onto your forehead for luck
wicking itself into the linen. The filament flickering, trying to go out. Not trying, really. Just going out. There were signs. A kiss under the abiding olive trees.
A woman who had held seven different demons inside the well of her mind, each one a wish that she hadn’t thought to ask, arriving there to be apostle to the apostles
who loved only suffering. Who, like you, were fishers of men, untouched and untouchable in any version of this that gets told. The air that seeps in is dusted with pollen
and a scent like myrrh or prophecy or whatever unwashed dream plays the part. Mostly, though, with nothing much at all, like the rumored hollow bones of angels, made so that like
raptors their wings can lift and carry away. Let vacancy tell its story in its own way, as a palimpsest of every other story of miracles scribbled on scroll and tablet and funerary wall.
An empty slab is its own kind of weather, astonishing and ruinous, sprinkled invisibly with skin cells. Touch me not, O touch me not. Death is an obligation, beloved one, not a victory. It is a failure
in how we know the world. We are born, we die, we rise again, like pollen drifted from the flowers called everlasting, immortelle, and strawflower, insistent on being, like them, our own way back.
To see is to believe, but to touch is a potter’s field of consequences, filled with all we’ve tried to forget. What you’ve learned is that you are never alone and so very alone, shaking with a cold that stiffens
every stalk and hollow, wondering at how they always know what they want from this world, how you have come to stand here again in this heartbreaking light just so they can have it.
Celeste Funari Muse
Celeste Funari Muse
GREEK DREAM
Danae Sioziou
I remember you driving in the mountains tracing circles into hairpin turns. I’m a little dizzy. Your voice fills the car like old spring snow. There is a town with a lake like a mirror, where you return to find all that you left behind, all that was not enough.
I know exactly what wasn’t enough, what was left out, what you held onto. If I look back, my gaze slides to the end of the route floating like a ribbon— I see you on the balcony.
You’re silent like the future.
I walk past the blond kids, the wife, the small provincial house, the Greek dream, your life.
I walk decisively towards you my feet bleed as if I’m walking on snow, I cover your eyes with my hand and embrace you: I’m ready to become all this old spring snow.
It’s simple: we don’t know how to love each other.
You remain silent.
I know that if you could you would return to the village of your childhood, long before the Greek dream. I know it, because I look at you through the eye of the talisman, the eye of an animal, you are silent like a secret folding into itself.
You shouldn’t have left anything behind. You should have just kept the secret. Even now you can walk up to the small house. The animal within you can guide you, like the eye of the talisman.
If you get there, you’ll be on your own If you get there, stay
It’s not too late and this is no longer the dream for which you gave your life it is a dream you carry up the mountain where, again, you become nobody.
Then you’re back in your village where you prayed to be somebody. Then I’m back in the car where I prayed to be your son.
Your voice no longer fills the car like old spring snow.
We’re silent like the future.
translated from the Greek by Panagiota
Stoltidou
ON THE DAYS WHEN I’M NOT ME
I REJOICE
Danae Sioziou
Some days I’m hard on myself it happens now and then and it’s a godsent. Those are the days when winter makes sense within you. You say, there, this snow that I extract from my body, exfoliating it, the snow that falls as my bones are rubbing together and my hand is scratching my stubborn head it is this snow, I’m afraid, that will cover me from head to toe, and won’t stop nor melt, life will perish here. Then you lick yourself sweetly until the last of the ice is gone from your body. Some days I’m easy on myself. It’s no use. No season lasts.
translated from the Greek by Panagiota Stoltidou
PANIC RICOCHETS AT THE MALL
Alejandro Borge Osorio
it’s okay, it’s just , it’s okay, it’s OKAY , it’s okay, uh guys , it’s okay, laugh! it’s okay, wait why, it’s okay, a stain , it’s okay, I heard , it’s okay, what , it’s okay, maybe if , it’s okay, are you , it’s okay, we can , it’s okay, you , it’s okay, is going , it’s okay, we make , it’s okay, laughing , it’s okay okay, wash it , it’s okay, I am , it’s okay, on? it’s okay, her laugh , it’s okay, at , it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, she’ll , it’s okay, trying , it’s okay, omg , it’s okay, we can , it’s okay, me? it’s okay, it’s okay, come , it’s okay, it’s OKAY , it’s okay, what , it’s okay, all , it’s okay, guys , it’s okay, it’s okay, out I , it’s okay, please , it’s okay, happened? it’s okay, calm , it’s okay, please , it’s okay, it’s okay, think! it’s okay, give me , it’s okay, is okay, it’s okay, down , it’s okay, don’t , it’s okay, it’s okay, please , it’s okay, time , it’s okay, that , it’s okay, and eat , it’s okay, laugh , it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay , it’s okay, more , it’s okay, soy sauce? it’s okay, oh , it’s okay, stop I , it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, time , it’s okay, oh no , it’s okay, yes let’s , it’s okay, wait guys , it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, is it? it’s okay, eat before , it’s okay, I can’t , it’s okay, I need to , it’s okay, I know , it’s okay, on your , it’s okay, we , it’s okay, If you , it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, to just , it’s okay, skirt? it’s okay, lose our , it’s okay, laugh , it’s okay, it’s okay , it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, oh no! it’s okay, minds , it’s okay, then , it’s okay, it’s okay, she’ll , it’s okay, but I , it’s okay, are you , it’s okay, over , it’s okay, I laugh , it’s okay, it’s okay, come out , it’s okay, love this , it’s okay? it’s okay, something silly , it’s okay, breathe , it’s okay, her , it’s okay, skirt and , it’s okay, no don’t be , it’s okay, now point , it’s okay, they’re it’s okay, shell , it’s okay, it might be , it’s okay, sad , it’s okay, yes! it’s okay, trying to help , it’s okay, soon , it’s okay, ruined , it’s okay, please , it’s okay, point! it’s okay, just laugh , it’s okay.
THE SMILING MAN
Gerardo Sámano Córdova
“Mateo, come!” His shout wakes me up. It takes me a moment to pin down who I am.
I’m Mateo.
“Mateo!” he calls again.
Sebastián is calling me from the shower. He’s my husband. I fling the comforter to the side and, with it, a dream already forgotten. We’re about to have shower-sexy-time! We haven’t had shower-sexy-time in months. Not since Sebastián became an even bigger shot at the bank and started showering in the morning to crisp up, now that he has also given up coffee.
“Come quick!”
The sight of Sebastián’s naked hairy body jiggles my horniness loose, as if I were encountering his delicious nipples for the first time, impish through his coarse chest hair, or his stout hanging penis—borrowed blessings I enjoy when possible.
“Come in here,” he orders.
He isn’t in a sexy mood. Rather rattled. I swing the glass shower-door open.
“Take your clothes off!”
I’m quick to strip. I always am. I step in naked and semi-hard.
“Count my toes.”
I kneel on the warm shower tile. The water stings too hot on my back. Seems like Sebastián is boiling himself a new skin. I’m not complaining—a frizzy, eager part of me still hopes for sexy-shower-time. I count his toes. One, two…nine. Sebastián has nine toes total. My belly cramps. I recognize the empty fall of terror. He’s missing his right pinky toe. I count
again, sweating for a way to reach ten, but one can’t simply conjure up a missing toe out of roaring distress.
“Nine, right?” asks Sebastián.
I graze each of Sebastián’s hairy knuckled toes one more time. Even in panic, I’m delighted to touch his toes.
“Nine,” I say.
“Count again, please.”
I count for a fourth time. In place of Sebastián’s right pinky toe there’s nothing: no scar, no tiny stump, no bone sticking out, no congealed blood, as if the toe had never grown.
“Your pinky toe is missing,” I say, pruned from the water and blushing.
Sebastián knows that when I blush I’m lying or, at best, hiding something. I’m terrible at deceit, but with the scalding water, the steam, and both of us panicked and sweating, Sebastián doesn’t clock my guilt. Besides, his missing pinky isn’t my fault. I didn’t eat it.
The man comes at night, stands by the entrance to our closet where moonlight and streetlight shine least, and smiles. His teeth are large, square, widely gapped, and bright. Each like a lamp carrying its own set of fluorescents. The rest of him is utter darkness, no eyes, no nose, no arms, no legs, the sleek tubular shape of an ironed-out ghost. The Smiling Man also wears a large wide-brimmed fedora, almost too wide to be taken seriously if he didn’t carry it with a panache that shuns the ridiculous. I’ve known this man since childhood, forever smiling in the darkest corners of the rooms I sleep in, quiet until he gets hungry. When I was six, he spoke for the first time, “Feed me,” he said, and ate my left middle finger down past the knuckle; at thirteen, he ate two-thirds of my right ear; at twenty-one a peach-sized chunk out of my calf. I let Sebastián think my
body’s missing parts are birth defects, something old and irremediable. I don’t want him to realize I’m cursed. He’s too luminous to understand darkness.
“Should I make you an egg?” I ask.
Naked on the bed, Sebastián inspects his foot, wiggling the toes that are still there. I towel myself dry and gather slacks, a shirt, underwear and socks for Sebastián to wear, hoping he’ll soon register he has a job to go to and stow his missing toe in the back of his mind. I need to regroup, swallow my guilt, and stop sweating so I can keep pretending I have no clue what’s going on. I’m forty-two. I recklessly believed the Smiling Man had finally lost his appetite and remained with me only as a dark guardian angel sent by a god with a bizarre sense of what is comforting.
“Where’s my toe?” Sebastián asks in a high-pitched whisper, ignoring the clothes I’ve laid out for him.
I pull his head to my chest and attempt to squash his worry. In our two years of marriage he hasn’t been sick once. But the year before we got married, only a few months after I met him, he got mono and fussed as if Death were outside just waiting to ring his intercom. I nursed him with his favorite lima soup from the Yucatán stall at the market, served scalding. We watched arthouse films—films he finds comforting and I try hard not to sleep through. He’s trembling under my embrace. I kiss his head. If I had superpowers I’d make him forget all about his missing pinky. Zap! Although, if I did have superpowers, I would’ve gotten rid of the Smiling Man a long time ago.
His phone rings. I let his head go. He has tears in his eyes. I poke him with his phone. The name of one of his most important clients glows on screen. He shakes his head. The phone goes silent. What now? Will he want to go to the doctor? Have a million tests done? They’ll find nothing wrong. The
Smiling Man isn’t a medical condition.
His phone rings again. “Seems important,” I say.
Sebastián ventures no effort, and I answer for him.
“She says it’s urgent,” I whisper.
He takes the phone. His voice comes out thin, and he asks his client for a second. He clears his throat, straightens himself up, and finally speaks as if his toe weren’t missing. “I’ll take care of it.” He hangs up. He accepts the pair of socks I hand him and slips them on without looking.
“I have to go.”
I nod.
He stares at me as if I should stop him. As if I should tell him he’s crazy to put work over a missing toe, but I smile and kiss him goodbye.
I list things when I’m frazzled. I list the friends I met when I lived in Berlin, after I’d lost my first two loves and decided not to love deeply ever again, when I was easier with my skin and my drugs and I swung naked over the Spree on a makeshift swing waiting for the sun to rise, before I came to Mexico City and met Sebastián. There was Leni who thought I’d be a famous artist one day—I crocheted such pretty things. There was Akiko who photographed flowers and printed them so small, but printed so many that she covered an abandoned wall—of the many that stood in Berlin—and transformed it into a portal glittering in miniscule flower-shaped fairies. There was a guy who fanned himself with a red paper fan, a fan he later gifted me because he liked the way I danced, a fan I keep tucked inside one of my desk drawers. I was someone else then. Almost darkless. A Mateo swinging naked waiting for the sun to rise.
In our closet, I list Sebastián’s dress shirts, nothing too attention seeking, pressed into stiffness by his beloved iron. I list
his shoes: brown wingtip oxfords, black simple oxfords, burgundy tassel-loafers, two pairs of dress sneakers—white and indigo—and two pairs of bright running shoes—pink and orange. I wear his brown oxfords, my feet dancing inside them, and I become horny just sensing his feet’s residual warmth. Where I now stand wearing my husband’s shoes, the Smiling Man stands at night. Perhaps he too likes to be close to Sebastián’s things. Last night he said “Feed me” in his small bird-like voice, floated to the foot of our bed, then, with great tenderness, bit our comforter and slid it off us. Sebastián curled into a fetal position but remained asleep, pushing out his little snores. I watched as the man opened his mouth, clasped down on Sebastián’s foot, threw his head back, and swallowed. I reacted then. I couldn’t just sit in bed and do nothing. An eaten Sebastián would leave me! I hurled Sebastián’s alarm clock at the man, but, as expected, it bounced off. The man smiled wider. “Leave him,” I whispered, but, already fed, he disappeared.
Sebastián and I visit three different podiatrists, none of which can tell him how he lost his toe. They say his x-rays show no sign that his toe ever existed. One of the podiatrists suggests a psychiatrist. “Am I crazy?” Sebastián asks as I drive. I tell him he’s not. Once, a few days ago, he did have ten toes.
The week goes by, then two more, and Sebastián relaxes. At least he stops mentioning his toe. Maybe he realizes he doesn’t need all ten of them. Meanwhile, I keep pretending we won’t get eaten, neglecting to dwell on how antsy the Smiling Man is acting. Instead of standing still, he sways. Side to side. Back and forth. Side to side again. He chomps the air too. Scrape, scrape, scrape, as he grinds his teeth.
The first time he did this routine I was twenty-three, and I’d moved in with Andrej, my first love. One morning
Andrej showed me a dent where his left nipple used to be. He didn’t fret. We were young. “Maybe it just fell off,” he said. Things like that happened. But after feasting on his nipple, the Smiling Man became antsy, swaying, and, a few months later, he swallowed Andrej whole. I swore I wouldn’t share a bedroom with anyone else ever again. Then Checo appeared, and he was so committed, so serious, so in love with me I couldn’t resist. I was thirty-four. Eleven years had passed, and the Smiling Man seemed less hungry. He hadn’t even eaten any more of me. One morning an apple-sized chunk of Checo’s ass had disappeared, and I decided to fight the man once and for all. I hit him, kicked him, hammered him, tried to poison him. I stabbed, hatcheted and axed him. But he’s squishy and pops back unhurt, like immortal jello. I shifted strategies and tried scolding the Smiling Man, saying he wasn’t allowed to eat any more. I threatened to despise him. Think him the worst companion ever. The Smiling Man only swayed and ground his teeth. Checo would be eaten too, I realized, and so, I warned him. He was the first person I told the Smiling Man existed. I proposed we fight the man together, immediately certain that was the way to do it, together, wielding something magical like the power of love. Checo called me a nutjob. He needed medical help—couldn’t I see a chunk of his ass had vanished?—and all I could do was speak of battling a made-up childhood monster. How could I be so childish, so callous!—Checo didn’t know which was worse. I left him. He’s still somewhere, ass-bitten but alive.
A month after the toe incident, Sebastián comes home from work and lingers inside the hall by the apartment’s entrance. I say, “Hello.”
He doesn’t answer.
“What’s wrong?”
Sebastián’s eyes are puffed pink. His hair wild. There’s an awesome beauty to his bedraggledness. I want to hold the back part of his neck where his hair prickles and kiss him, but he exudes an angry aura that prevents me.
“Undress,” he orders.
I shove my jeans down. I should’ve taken my boots off first because I stumble trying to ram my jeans past my feet. In the meantime, I slip out of my sweater and peel my t-shirt off so that his furious gloom can amuse itself with my bare chest. I drop to the floor, unlace my boots, yank and throw them. I stand up and, naked, spread my arms in a silent ta-da! Sebastián limps toward me as if his foot hurt though I know it doesn’t. Whatever the man eats leaves no trace, including pain.
Sebastián’s face hangs a centimeter away from mine. There’s alcohol in his breath, sweet like jasmine at dusk. When I was a teenager, I sat by my bedroom window letting jasmine waft in as I ran the back of my fingers over my lips—the way I thought a kiss would feel. I want Sebastián to lick the remnants of my eaten ear, but he pinches it instead. He grazes my cheek with his stubble and travels down my body with his nose. He kneels. I get hard. He takes my hand and traces the emptiness where my middle finger should be. He sits on his heels and swivels me around. I gaze past our large windows, eleven floors up, at Mexico City extending far into a glow beyond the horizon. This city where he was born, and I try to convince myself I belong. Sebastián brushes the dip in my calf with his fingers. I imagine a young, hovering version of myself watching us from outside, happy because I’m not alone. How did he use to explain his loneliness? Floaty. Loneliness as being unanchored. I won’t have Sebastián much longer. I’ll leave before he gets eaten.
“What happened to you?” he asks, pinching the skin where my calf used to be. The apartment feels empty in my
silence. I get goosebumps. “Tell me.”
“You won’t love me anymore.”
“Please.”
I turn. He’s so sad and scared. My mouth opens before I can stop it. “I’ll show you.”
We wait in bed. Our room devoured in shadows. No one but myself has been able to see the Smiling Man, but now because he wants to, I expect Sebastián will be able to see him too. The man is taking a long time to show up. Sebastián nods off. I’m scared. What kind of bonkers plan is this? If Sebastián sees the Smiling Man, he’ll be terrified. He’ll get rid of me sooner. Won’t even contemplate sticking it out with me to fight the Smiling Man together.
Still, I can hope.
The man finally appears. I elbow Sebastián awake. He yelps.
“You see him?”
Sebastián scuttles next to me, almost on top. “Is it a demon?”
I never regarded the man as evil, only hungry. “He’s the Smiling Man,” I say.
The man’s grin widens.
“Did you summon him?”
“He appears on his own. Ever since I was a kid.”
The man glides closer to the bed. Sebastián thrusts his back against me, nesting his legs on his chest.
“Feed me,” the man says in his twittering voice.
“He’ll eat us!”
“He won’t,” I say. “It’s too soon.” The man didn’t eat Andrej until months after his first bite.
The Smiling Man worms his way into bed and seizes
our comforter with his teeth.
“Mateo!” Sebastián howls.
The comforter flies across the room.
“Mateo!”
I jump on the man, slip, and land hard on the floor. He’s slick like a greased-up eel. Sebastián kicks himself farther up the bed. The Smiling Man slithers, his teeth hounding Sebastián’s feet. I hurl myself on the man but skid back onto the floor. Sebastián kicks. Knocks the man’s fedora right off. I believed his hat was an inextricable part of his body.
“Yes! Kick him!” I shout, getting back on my feet.
Sebastián attacks again. This time, his foot plunges deep into the man’s head. Stuck. While Sebastián tugs on his leg to get his foot unstuck, the man’s head morphs into a swallowing mouth, dragging Sebastián inside him. I dig my fingernails into the man, refusing to slip off one more time. I climb him. I bite. Pinch. Squeeze. His organs wriggle underneath like worms inside a lubed up punching bag. Sebastián flails and groans, struggling to drag himself away. He reaches for the headrest with a freakish spasm of his arm. He squeaks a bitter, stabbing note and goes limp.
“No!” I jerk my heft backwards, hauling the man down with me. Something gives within the man, a nook where my arms squeeze without almost any effort. Like colossal seltzer, a bubbling fizzes inside him. The man vomits my now slimy husband. He straightens, lifting me up with him, and whips his body. I fly across the room. The light is knocked out of me. I can’t locate the muscles to get up and continue fighting.
“Mateo.” Sebastian’s voice travels like a spark.
He’s alive! Suddenly it’s simple to locate my bones, my tendons, my muscles, my breath. I bounce back to my feet, primed and ready, but the man has vanished. His fedora lies on
the floor, a hat-shaped black-hole.
“You kicked his hat off,” I say.
Squatting on the bed, Sebastián whimpers, color-drained and floppy. “So?”
“I’ve never been able to.”
“He ate me.” He points a quivery finger to his feet. I sit and hoist his gorgeous calves on my lap. He’s missing his other pinky toe and the one toe next to it. He drops his face to his hands and weeps.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I could continue to hug and pet him until his shock and sadness seep away. He would still get eaten. I step down from our bed, walk to the closet, find a duffel bag, and stuff t-shirts, socks, and underwear inside.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving. The man will follow me. You’ll be safe.”
“You’re going to leave me alone?”
“I’ll take him away. He’s always been with me.”
Sebastián wipes his wet face and, with great effort as his soggy noodle limbs won’t help him, he scoots forward to the edge of the bed. “Come here.”
My legs want to go to him, but I restrain them.
“Come. Please.”
I shake my head no.
He breathes in and tries to temper the terror sketched on his face. He still shivers. “You may have seen this thing first,” he says, his voice soft, though more doubtful than he would normally want it to come out. “You may think he’s yours, but he wants me.” Sebastián raises his foot, the left one with the newly eaten toes. “You don’t get to give up.”
“I’m protecting you.”
“You’re being a coward.”
“He’ll eat you.”
Sebastián flings one limp arm toward me. Like he wants me. He could also be shooing me away.
I zip up my bag.
He takes my hand and guides me to him.
“We’ll fight the man,” he says. “I can spare a few more toes if I get to keep you.”
I could ask why, but I keep my mouth shut. I snuggle on his slime-covered chest. His nervous heart beats on my ear. Mine is a whole drums section. I wait to catch the moment when our hearts sync up. They don’t. Seems as if they’ll continue skipping in a boundless reach for one another.
Imani Nikelle there is no version of this story where i am not iphigenia daughtered, martyred paling in the crescent light dear to someone & still culled who ever did what they intended & got away with their life? his own son’s cup wouldn’t pass the stories that cling always have something to do with the doling out of belated salvation i mean to say i learned the verses & hymns & never felt clean i mean to say my shame had teeth & i was all meat on bone i cross my t’s and pray to them. it would take a bleeding man to make me clean another kindness i am told my life has been full of them i count them before i sleep waking only to cut garlic on the wrong board souring future fruits write a poem into the space between my breath & the rest of the world intent, the way a child is, on making a home of this vessel leaving home a girl & returning with a reddened maw sometimes you can hear the bite in abide my purity as good as cream in the desert i mean to say when a body was a decision i could make, i joined mine to his & tore like a perforated line no watershed no veil in the temple splitting in two just a viscous blush on the altar of a man i once found beautiful
mythology like
MAIDEN
AT THE CAFÉ HURACÁN ACROSS FROM SALOMĖJA NERIS
(“THE TRAITOR”) HIGH SCHOOL
Rimas Uzgiris
Pietro’s cigar smoke hardly made a dent in the air. This is Griselda, he said (I think), leaning back on the wooden bench, saying – your colleague, Vilnius University, Lithuanian philology. But you’re in translation studies, poetry, yes? Yes, but I don’t think Griselda was impressed, her hair settled to the tonal range of our clouds, her body swaddled tight against the sharp autumn day, her smile making me hunch like the wind that whipped the roofs of German Street as she mentioned how happy she was that Latakas won the Jotvingian Prize this year (he seems post-modernly atavistic to me, which, I admit, is kind of interesting), and how she loves Stankevičius no matter what anyone says (ah, it starts to make sense, I thought: the old lady who loves the powerfully elevated voice, the one which I once tried to capture in English, but it fled from me like Keats’ bird), and she talked of living in this Soviet block-building (built over the ghetto’s ruins) as a young woman, of how Širvys came to her apartment to watch soccer because he never had a TV, how Vačiūnaitė lived just upstairs, how Marcinkevičius would drop by, how so-and-so would play chess with her, and so-and-so brought so many books from the library (ones that were not so easy to get, I was meant to understand), and she would read and read, a straight A book nerd reminiscing about the house with the writers –because the Soviets liked to keep them all in one place. Oh the impromptu recitals! The parties they had! The memory of Vačiūnaitė
giving birth before her very eyes made those now dimmed salon lights sparkle and flare like candles before they go out. The memory of the lesser poet jumping off the balcony brought the shadow of a broken body to the mirror of her memory. But it was all as it had to be, for this is what is expected of poets. And you couldn’t help but feel that this had been the best time of her life, even as the translator from Italy tried to moderate her: “That’s how it looks to you now.” But I knew that’s how it was for her, the young woman in love with words fawning over the inspired native tongues of a colonized nation (remember how Sartre told Plečkaitis they should write in Russian), being accepted even if it meant smuggling Širvys’s booze into the Vilnius Žalgiris match because he was too big to be caught with such a thing, and she, well, she was she and is still so.
I don’t think she ever moved out.
Benjamin Niespodziany is a Chicago-based writer whose work has appeared in Indiana Review , BOOTH , Fence , Bennington Review, Conduit , and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection was released in 2022 through Okay Donkey and his novella of connected microfictions is out now with X-R-A-Y . You can find more at neonpajamas.com.
Joshua Anthony holds (precariously) an MFA from Eastern Washington University. Josh has appeared in a fingerful of magazines such as Crab Fat Magazine , Gone Lawn , and Slipstream , among others. Josh teaches at Gonzaga University.
Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory . Her work has been featured in Door Is a Jar Magazine , 3:AM Magazine , and Pinch Journal Online , among others; it has also been longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites.
Norman Minnick is the author of three collections of poetry and editor of several anthologies, most recently, The Lost Etheridge: Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight . His poems and essays have been published in The Georgia Review , The Sun , World Literature Today , The Writer’s Chronicle , Oxford American , and New World Writing , among others. He was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Visit www.buzzminnick.com for more information.
Alex Niemi is a writer and award-winning translator. Her translations include For the Shrew and Hekate by Anna Glazova (Zephyr Press and Toad Press/Veliz Books), as well as The John Cage Experiences by Vincent Tholomé (Autumn Hill Books). She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Elephant (dancing girl press). Her translation work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and nominated for the Best of the Net.
Emiliana Renuart lives in St. Louis, Missouri where she works with STL’s oldest indie bookstore. She is originally from Michigan, where she attended Kalamazoo College and worked with and advocated for young readers and writers.
Mathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: a novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children’s titles. His stories, poems, and essays have been featured in over one hundred publications such as Wigleaf , the Saturday Evening Post , and the Los Angeles Times . Cailler has garnered numerous awards for his writing, including a Pushcart Prize; a Short Story America Prize; and accolades from the Paris, Los Angeles, and New England Book Festivals. Connect with him on social media @writesfromla or visit mathieucailler.com.
John Blair ’s seventh book, The Shape of Things to Come , was published last fall by Gival Press.
Celeste Funari Muse celestefunarimuse.com
Ben Miller is the author of the recently released Pandemonium Logs: Sioux Falls, South Dakota 2020-2022 (Raritan Skiff Books, an imprint of Rutgers University Press) and River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll Amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa (Lookout Books). His writing has been anthologized in Best American Essays and Best American Experimental Writing, and his awards include fellowships from the NEA and the Radcliffe Institute.
Panagiota Stoltidou read Literary Studies and Sociolinguistics at Freie Universität Berlin and Columbia University in New York City. Her research, reviews and poetry have appeared in Comparative Literature Review , Hopscotch Translation , and elsewhere. A German Academic Scholarship Holder since 2023, she is currently pursuing a master’s in Comparative Literature in Berlin and Zurich. She is the editor-inchief of Filmpost .
Alejandro Borge Osorio is studying Critical Ethnic Studies and Creative Writing. They are from Barranquilla, Colombia and Demorest, GA. They are a poet and artist who is committed to exploring all avenues of artistic and academic expression. They encourage you to check out Roots , The Ethnicity and Race studies journal. They enjoy thrifting, going on adventures and meeting new people. Follow them in this life @jbo.03.
Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City living in Brooklyn. He is the author of Monstrilio , winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize, finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and named a Book of the Year by NPR , Elle , Goodreads and others. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan and is the current Writer in Residence at Fordham University. Gerardo has also been known to draw little creatures.
Imani Nikelle is a southern-born, East Coast dwelling poet & filmmaker. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Callaloo , Poet Lore , Cordite Poetry Review , and elsewhere. She is currently earning an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.
Rimas Uzgiris is a poet and translator, author of North of Paradise (Kelsay Books), Tarp (poems translated into Lithuanian), translator of eight poetry collections from Lithuanian, and the Venice Biennale Golden Lion winning opera Sun and Sea . Uzgiris was born and raised in the USA, holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Grant and NEA Translation Fellowship, he teaches at Vilnius University.
